2016 Pacific typhoon season

Season overview

The strong El Niño of 2015 gave way to neutral conditions in 2016, and the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) noted that storm formation shifted back westward across the basin as a result. Many of the year's strongest typhoons went on to strike the Philippines, Taiwan, China, Japan or South Korea.

By storm numbers the year was close to normal. JTWC tracked 30 tropical cyclones in the western North Pacific and described that total as near normal, and its count of 17 typhoons matched its 1959 to 2016 average of about 17 a year. Total energy was more modest. The site's archive gives an accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) of 243.2, and a Colorado State University calculation from JTWC data reached 261.9, both below the 1965 to 2015 average of 298 used by the Tropical Storm Risk consortium. That consortium had expected a quiet year, forecasting 22 tropical storms, 13 typhoons and an ACE of 217 in May, later raising the ACE outlook to 239 and trimming it to 231 in August.

How the season unfolded

The first half of the year was almost empty. A short-lived tropical depression near southern China in late May was the only system in the site's archive before July, and no named storm was active anywhere in the basin for 199 days, from mid-December 2015 until Typhoon Nepartak was named on 3 July. That made 2016 the second-latest season on record for a first named storm. Nepartak then became the season's first typhoon on 4 July and reached Category 5 strength two days later.

Late July brought a pair of storms to the South China Sea region. Typhoon Mirinae crossed Hainan and then peaked as it came ashore in the Red River Delta of northern Vietnam, while Typhoon Nida crossed northern Luzon before landfall on the Shenzhen coast of Guangdong. August was far busier, with several storms forming far to the north and east around a broad monsoon circulation. Chanthu, Conson, Kompasu, Mindulle and Lionrock all ran toward Japan, and by the end of the month the island of Hokkaido had been hit by three storms, the most since record-keeping began in 1951. Typhoon Lionrock, which drifted erratically for nearly two weeks before turning toward Japan, was the longest-lived storm in the site's archive at 336 recorded hours.

September and October formed the peak of the season. Typhoon Meranti, Typhoon Malakas and the weak Tropical Depression Rai were active at the same time in mid-September, and Typhoon Megi and Typhoon Chaba followed later in the month. October brought Tropical Storm Aere, which lingered for more than a week before its remnants drifted southwest toward Vietnam, then Typhoon Sarika and Typhoon Haima in quick succession across northern and central Luzon.

Activity eased in November, when Typhoon Meari stayed over open water without causing reported damage and Typhoon Tokage crossed the central Philippines. A final burst came in late December: Typhoon Nock-Ten formed east of the Philippines, intensified rapidly and brought the season's last tropical-stage observation on 28 December.

Strongest storms

Five typhoons reached Category 5 strength on the one-minute wind scale, and they were spread across the whole season. Typhoon Meranti was the strongest, with archived peak winds of 170 knots and a central pressure of 895 hPa on 13 September as it moved through the Luzon Strait. Typhoon Nepartak peaked at 155 knots on 6 July, Typhoon Chaba at 150 knots on 3 October, Typhoon Haima at 145 knots on 18 October and Typhoon Nock-Ten at 140 knots on 25 December.

Meranti stood out even against that company. Its winds made it the strongest tropical cyclone anywhere in the world in 2016 by JTWC's estimate, surpassing Cyclone Winston's peak over Fiji in February, and the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) estimated a central pressure of 890 hPa, placing it among the most intense tropical cyclones recorded. Chaba developed a sharply defined eye only about nine kilometres across during an explosive burst of strengthening on its way toward Okinawa. Nock-Ten was the strongest tropical cyclone recorded on Christmas Day anywhere in the world since at least 1960, measured by one-minute winds.

Below the Category 5 group, Typhoon Lionrock and Typhoon Megi both peaked at 120 knots, and Typhoon Malakas and Typhoon Sarika at 115 knots. Typhoon Namtheun, a compact storm with a pinhole eye, rapidly intensified to 100 knots in early September before weakening sharply ahead of its approach to Kyushu.

Notable landfalls and impacts

Taiwan and the Chinese province of Fujian were struck three times. Typhoon Nepartak weakened before landfall at Taitung in Taiwan on 8 July and came ashore again at Shishi in Fujian as a tropical storm, but flooding in Fujian made it one of the year's deadliest storms, with 86 deaths and damage of 9.99 billion yuan (about US$1.49 billion, 2016 values) reported in the season article. Typhoon Meranti passed directly over the small Philippine island of Itbayat near peak strength, then passed south of Taiwan and struck Xiamen on 15 September as the strongest typhoon on record to make landfall in Fujian. Typhoon Megi crossed Taiwan at Hualien on 27 September and then moved into Fujian; the season article reports 8 deaths and NT$3.36 billion in economic losses in Taiwan, and 44 deaths and 9.7 billion yuan in damage in mainland China.

Japan and the Korean Peninsula took repeated hits. Typhoon Lionrock made landfall near Ofunato in Iwate Prefecture at the end of August, the first tropical cyclone on record to come ashore on the Pacific coast of the Tohoku region, and it also caused severe flooding in North Korea; the season article's impact table attributes about 550 deaths to the storm, most of them in that flooding. Typhoon Malakas crossed southern and western Japan on 19 and 20 September. Typhoon Chaba, which had weakened sharply and was becoming extratropical, still reached the Busan area of South Korea on 5 October as the strongest typhoon to strike the country since 2012, killing at least 7 people.

The Philippines faced a run of intense landfalls in the autumn. Typhoon Sarika struck Baler in Aurora on 16 October, damaging or destroying nearly 13,000 homes, with agricultural losses of 3.63 billion pesos. Days later, Typhoon Haima prompted the highest warning signal in Cagayan and Isabela before landfall at Penablanca in Cagayan as a Category 4 storm; damage in the Philippines reached 3.74 billion pesos (about US$77.6 million). Typhoon Nock-Ten struck Catanduanes late on Christmas Day, and the season article lists 13 deaths from the storm.

Vietnam suffered from weaker but wetter systems. Typhoon Mirinae caused about US$324 million in damage in the country in late July. Tropical Depression Rai brought flooding to central Vietnam and Thailand in September and was blamed for 12 deaths, and Tropical Storm Aere's floods in central Vietnam in October caused damage of 4.6 trillion dong (about US$209 million). The season article values damage at 2016 prices in US dollars unless another currency is given.

Retired names and agency counts

The storms that struck the Philippines and China left a mark on the naming lists. At its 2017 session the ESCAP/WMO Typhoon Committee retired Meranti, Sarika, Haima and Nock-ten because of the deaths and damage they caused, replacing them with Nyatoh, Trases, Mulan and Hinnamnor. The Philippine weather agency PAGASA retired its local names Karen, Lawin and Nina, used for Sarika, Haima and Nock-Ten, after each caused more than 1 billion pesos in damage. Haima was also the first storm for which PAGASA used its super typhoon category, introduced in 2015. The name Rai was used for the first time in 2016, having replaced Fanapi after the 2010 season.

Other counts differ from the site's figures because they measure different things. The JMA, the official regional centre, named 26 tropical storms and classed 13 as typhoons using ten-minute average winds, which run lower than the one-minute winds used by US agencies; storms such as Mirinae, Nida and Tokage were severe tropical storms on the JMA scale but typhoons on the one-minute scale, and the JMA also named Malou and Rai, which did not reach 34 knots in US-agency data. JTWC counted 30 tropical cyclones, 26 tropical storms and 17 typhoons from its own warnings, including six super typhoons of 130 knots or more. The site counts storms with one-minute winds of 34 knots or more during the tropical stage within the calendar year, which gives 25 tropical storms and 16 typhoons.